Algernon D'Ammassa: We need politics of solidarity, not class warfare

It was expressed most recently by Congressman Steve Pearce, visiting a town hall meeting in Columbus last month. He was asked about Luna County's unemployment rate, which was 15 percent in July and the highest in the state. Pearce's response was consistent with remarks he has made in the past about those struggling in our county.

"There is a culture in the town that simply says we are not going to take the available opportunities," he said, and then posed a rhetorical question: "Is there a mindset here that does not want to raise itself up?"

No one pointed out — not to his face anyway — that the people he was denigrating were his own constituents.

This is the perennial "underclass" argument, the casting of the unemployed and the poor as leeches and frauds, the idea of a "poverty culture" wherein destitution is a lifestyle choice.

This is, sad to say, not an unusual attitude in politics. We've been scapegoating the poor for generations, and it isn't just Republicans who do it. Luna County Commissioner Javier Diaz, a Democrat, has called more than once for the poor, already enduring economic hardship, to face the additional indignity of peeing in a cup to prove they aren't using drugs before receiving public assistance. In 2014, I spoke with a local political candidate off the record, another Democrat, and when I asked her about unemployment in the county, she sighed, looked off into the distance, and said, "People don't want to work."

Conservatives and liberals both engage in "othering" the unemployed. They do it in different ways. Among conservatives, it is an excuse to attack budget items that help the poor and reframe the issue as about moral character and values — never the economic system itself. Among liberals, it comes out as a charitable yet paternalistic attitude, remote from the lived experience of the poor.

In both cases, the poor are separated from other workers and the larger conditions that shape their choices: lack of jobs, stagnating wages and diminishing benefits, economic expansion with lagging job growth. The focus is on what's wrong with poor people instead of what's wrong about the economy, the inequality of opportunity and second chances, the barriers to success, the asymmetrical cost of living when you are poor. These are more difficult problems, the solutions more subversive and dangerous, and the gulf between those who have power and those who are excluded is great. Thus, even well-meaning members of the political class give in to the resignation and disdain. Don't blame the system or the policies; blame the victims.

Because working class consciousness and solidarity are scarce, politicians divide us and preserve the status quo. Some people struggle just above the poverty line, and aren't eligible for the services available to their poorer neighbors. This is the kind of resentment that draws people to Donald Trump's presidential campaign.

To bring the unemployment rate down, we know that Luna County will have to change. It will require a Marshall Plan, the building of a new economy on the remains of the old. That process requires a different politics, one in which the poor and the underemployed have a voice. A politics of solidarity to replace the politics of resignation and disdain for people.

Desert Sage would like to hear from you. Employers, tell me your problems. Workers, tell me about your struggles. Young people, educators, parents, health care professionals — tell me about it. We have set up a new email address: DesertSageMail@gmail.com.

Let's start a dialogue.

Algernon D'Ammassa is Desert Sage. He lives in Deming with his family.